


Trust Me

by TheAsexualofSpades



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Nick Fury Knows All, Protective Clint Barton, Protective Nick Fury, Protective Phil Coulson, can be platonic or romantic you decide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:13:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27394783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAsexualofSpades/pseuds/TheAsexualofSpades
Summary: Trust plays a big role in the success and failure of any SHIELD agent. Trust of the agent, trust of the system, trust of the self.Perhaps no one knows this better than Clint Barton, Maria Hill, Phil Coulson, and Nick Fury.Natasha Romanoff will learn it soon enough.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Maria Hill, Clint Barton & Maria Hill & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton & Phil Coulson & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, Maria Hill & Natasha Romanov, Nick Fury & Maria Hill, Nick Fury & Natasha Romanov, Phil Coulson & Nick Fury
Comments: 3
Kudos: 43





	Trust Me

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the prompt, babe! I had fun writing it, I hope it's what you wanted ^_^

**Iconic anemone request:** I love your drabbles about the MCU. Do you mind writing some scenes of Coulson, Hill, Nat, Clint, being a family with frustrated Fury having to deal with the aftermath? (Cause Fury definitely isn't part of that family, no way.)

* * *

“What do you mean you can’t find them?”

  


“Agent Barton has turned off his trackers, ma’am,” the SHIELD agent in front of her says, typing furiously on his keyboard, “we’ve lost them.”

  


“There’s no way he’s turned off all of them,” she barks, “check again.”  


  


“Ma’am, it’s every single one!” Sure enough, there are no readings on the screen. “We can’t—we can’t trace him, there are no trackers in his suit that are still operational.”

  


Hill pinches the bridge of her nose. This isn’t the first time they’ve had issues with Barton, it probably won’t be the last. “He does realize we can’t _help_ him if we don’t know where he is, right?”

  


“Yes, ma’am.”

  


_Barton is a survivor. We’ll just have to hope he can pull it out of his hat one last time._

  


To be honest, Hill thinks to herself as she stares at the screens, if this were any other mission, she’s not sure she’d be so upset about it. Barton is capable. Barton is scrappy. Barton is stubborn.

  


The problem is he’s hunting an assassin who is all those things and more.

  


It’s the most dangerous target SHIELD’s been after in a while, and she’s still not completely sure why they’ve sent out _Barton,_ who’s still pretty green by SHIELD standards, and just him at that. No team. No backup. Just one little agent.

  


She feels a hand on her shoulder and turns, seeing Coulson staring at her with a raised eyebrow.

  


“I hate this,” she murmurs, too quiet for the others to hear, “I hate being _here,_ behind the screens, not out there.”

  


“We have to trust them,” Coulson says in that soft patient voice she only hears when she’s in the medbay after a mission, not sure whether or not she can relax, “you know that. They’ve got the eyes and ears, the feet on the ground. They can adapt to things faster than they can tell them to us.”

  


“I know,” Maria says, letting his hand hold her steady, “I just don’t like it.”

  


“You’d rather be out there, wouldn’t you,” he chuckles, watching her face pinch, “can’t say I blame you.”

  


“He’s going to get written up for that,” she grumbles, nodding toward the still deactivated trackers, “isn’t he?”

  


“Only if he can’t lie his way out of it.”

  


“You ever met someone who’s lied to _him_ and survived?”

  


Coulson just gives her a wink that tells her nothing.

  


For the rest of the night, she stands there, heart in her throat, palms prickling, as they keep trying to make contact with Agent Barton. It never crosses her mind that Coulson said to trust _them._ Not _him,_ but _them._

  


At least, not until later.

  


* * *

  


Clint looks down. He can’t kill her. He knows he can’t. He’s sure that whatever handler is on the other end of his now-deactivated comm would scream at him to follow orders, but that’s just not what he’s here for.

  


He knows he’s lucky. He got this chance. He got out. He’s got someone on top of him that _wants_ him here. There’s a good chance he can roll with the punches once he gets back.

  


The assassin has bright red hair that curls into a shock near her leg. She isn’t asleep. He knows she isn’t. Her breathing is too even. There isn’t a _chance_ she’s asleep right now and he doesn’t blame her. He’s sure he wouldn’t be either.

  


There’s no reason for her to trust him, he gets it. There’s absolutely no reason that he shouldn’t try and put an arrow through her right now. But he won’t.

  


He knows that look. The facial expression that’s just this side of too soft, blank in every sense of the word. Hers is even better than his, a slight uptick of the lips on the left side, her eyebrow arched ever so delicately. At a first glance—and let’s be honest, _any_ glance for most people, but he’s not most people—it looks like haughty superiority. But it’s not. It’s evident in how _still_ it stays.

  


She’s as much of a prisoner as he was.

  


He’s going to get her out of this, one way or another, and deep, deep down, he knows he can’t kill her. Skill level unaccounted for, he _knows_ he won’t be able to kill her. SHIELD would think that a weakness, probably.

  


All he can hope for is when he turns this comm back on, he’ll get someone good.

  


“You can stop pretending now,” he murmurs, “I know you’re not asleep. I got food.”

  


She stirs, turning over and staring at him, her expression perfectly blank. He doesn’t try and talk. He won’t convince her of anything right now, except the fact that maybe the food isn’t poisoned.

  


He doesn’t promise that he’ll keep her safe. He doesn’t promise that they’ll take care of her. He doesn’t promise anything.

  


He only types a word out on his comm and hopes that when he presses send, it doesn’t go to Victoria Hand or Jasper Sitwell or any of the other higher-level agents that might be monitoring.

  


He knows he’s done right when he gets a return message that can only be from Maria Hill.

  


* * *

  


Coulson knows what being a SHIELD agent is like. Which means he knows when someone is hiding something.

  


Maria Hill is an incredible agent. Her understanding of logistics makes her an invaluable asset and her ability to change and adapt to almost any set of challenges thrown her way cannot be overstated.

  


Maria Hill cares. Deeply. She throws herself into projects because she believes in SHIELD. In protecting people. That includes her fellow agents. And sometimes that can be more than a little blinding.

  


Coulson can’t really talk. He’s gotten into his fair share of scrapes for sticking his neck out or being more than a little reckless to protect someone he respects and cares about. But he’d like to think he’s gotten a little better at disguising those acts as doing his duty.

  


There’s not much Hill can disguise when she receives a comm message from Barton right in front of him.

  


She knows when she’s been made, looking up at Coulson with a determination he’s rarely seen face to face from her. Her hand is poised over the comm, almost as if she’s daring him to tell her not to do something.

  


“Protocol states that you must inform all active agents of developments,” he reminds softly, “including when comms come back online.”

  


“I’m aware, sir.”

  


He glances around. No one else has noticed yet. “Agent Barton is deep in hostile territory and it’s likely that he’s made contact with the target.”

  


“Satellites confirm that assumption, sir.”

  


Coulson looks back down at her hand. “Any contact on our part could compromise the mission.”

  


“The mission comes first to SHIELD, sir, always.”

  


Her responses are perfect. No inflection. Her hand barely twitches. In any other circumstances, if he weren’t paying enough attention, he doubts he’d’ve noticed. He tells her so, smiling when her eyebrow quirks. She’s still staring at him.

  


Coulson knows what being a SHIELD agent is like. And sometimes that means throwing away the book and trusting each other. He trusts Maria Hill. He trusts Clint Barton.

  


When Hill sends the return message, for a brief instant, Phil’s eyes flicker up toward the ceiling, up toward the office of a man who _knows_ what it means to be a SHIELD agent.

  


He trusts him too.

  


* * *

  


Trust. What a small, _small_ word.

  


Bat your eyelashes. Smile shyly. Arch your back a little. Stumble into them just enough so they feel the press of your body. Nod firmly. Tilt your head. Draw your eyebrows together.

  


She knows how to make them trust her. A few soft words, a few gentle touches, this kind of trust she understands. Lure them closer, coax down their guard. Get what you need. Vanish.

  


These people have a very different type of trust.

  


They are not a unit. They would be easy to pick apart. They all have different wants, different desires, different needs. Different weaknesses. The one who came to find her, Agent Clint Barton, doesn’t fit in here like the others. Their uniformity rasps against his skin like sandpaper and he moves like he knows his body, but not like he knows its place.

  


She sees distrust in all the other eyes, in the slight shift of shoulders, in the fingers that never stray from the trigger guards. She walks past them with her bubble that threatens to burst at the slightest falter until she meets the new agent.

  


Maria Hill, Agent Clint Barton had said, another agent. A different agent. Her gaze travels up and down as Maria Hill’s does the same. She’s sure the agent sees some of her history written in the way she breathes. She can see Maria Hill’s too.

  


Maria Hill is a cog in the machine she has walked into. Significant enough to be important, well-placed enough to cause a massive hindrance if she chooses to, not important enough to be essential. Maria Hill wears her rank on her chest in the hidden halls of this mysterious bunker and does not shy away from meeting her eyes, even when she turns up the danger and stares. Maria Hill does not flinch.

  


Maria Hill trusts Clint Barton. She can see it.

  


Another agent walks into the room. She wills her body to remain completely composed.

  


Some people in this world are bullets, she has learned. Some people are guns.

  


Clint Barton is a bullet. Maria Hill is a gun.

  


This new agent is the finger on the trigger.

  


“My name is Phil Coulson,” the man says, completely taking the protocol for interrogation and throwing it out the window, apparently, “I’m an agent of SHIELD.”

  


She does not offer her name. This new agent, Phil Coulson, keeps talking to her. He asks her how long she’s been working for the Red Room. She doesn’t respond. He asks her why she was in Latvia. She doesn’t respond. Sooner or later they will learn that they won’t get any information out of her.

  


Then she learns that what they want is not information.

  
“I told you,” Clint Barton mumbles, “they’ll listen. And if you…if you want, I’ll vouch for you.”

  


Maria Hill nods. Phil Coulson smiles at her.

  


They want her to _join them._

  


She knows what she _should_ do. There are guns in this room. She can take out Clint Barton in barely an instant. Use his body as cover. Kill Maria Hill, kill Phil Coulson. Escape with the intel and return to the Red Room, ready for whatever punishment she will receive for failing her mission or die trying to get there.

  


But she looks into the eyes of Clint Barton, an agent, an assassin, someone who stared at her and made the choice to lower his weapon.

  


There is a different kind of strength required to grant _mercy._

  


She can trust strength, even if she can’t trust them.

  


“What must I do?”

  


Phil Coulson smiles. “We can start with your name.”

  


“Natasha. Natasha Romanoff.”

  


* * *

  


Fury looks at the report as Coulson leaves the office. He flips through it one more time as the door shuts.

  


He is not a young man anymore and years of being a SHIELD agent have honed his paranoia into weapons that keep him alive. Weapons that can just as easily turn inward if he’s not careful. That’s why he has a very small circle of people that keep their eyes on things he can’t.

  


Maria Hill is a carer. She takes statistics and bends them to her will when they won’t agree. Clint Barton is a wild card that lands on his feet just to catch someone else.

  


Phil Coulson is a good man.

  


Fury sits back and stares at the door, Natasha Romanoff’s file open on the desk in front of him. Three people have come to him to vouch for this mysterious assassin that got on SHIELD’s radar in perhaps the worst way possible for someone who wants to survive. She’s a survivor.

  


Fury knows what it means to be a survivor.

  


You don’t really survive the kinds of things they live through. You don’t come out of hellfire without getting singed and you sure as hell don’t dive back in. You don’t bear your teeth when someone else’s are at your throat and come out of that without blood running down your chin. You don’t light the fire inside you that keeps you warm on ark lonely nights and expect it to go out, just like that.

  


You don’t defeat monsters without becoming one.

  


Fury knows that just from _looking_ at this file what he’d see in the gaze of Natasha Romanoff. Of the calculations that would be running through her head the second she steps foot into the office. The games of chess they’d play with every spoken word. The gaze that would lock onto his jugular or the bridge of his nose and refuse to let him go.

  


He wonders, briefly, if she recognizes the same in him and realizes he’s not going to take advantage of it the same way she would.

  


The world doesn’t like people—the world doesn’t like _things_ like them.

  


That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth protecting.

  


Fury closes the file and stamps it, sliding into the secure safe in his desk drawer.

  


He made the right choice sending Barton out after this one.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Come yell at me on tumblr
> 
> https://a-small-batch-of-dragons.tumblr.com/


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